Monday, November 5, 2007, 04:43 PM [
Meditation Journal]
An essay or journal covering the Dedicant's personal experience of building mental discipline, through the use of meditation, trance, or other systematic techniques on a regular basis. The experiences in the essay or journal should cover at least a five months period. (800 words min.)
I've decided to opt for journal entries, so I can look back and see what stages and changes I've gone through. Meditation has always been something I've enjoyed but never been able to commit to.
I likely began in mid-late 2005, when I first began studying Paganism. I began with visualization excercises, which weren't very difficult. I'm a chronic daydreamer and have quite a decent visual memory. Manipulating an image in my mind wasn't at all a challenge.
This was when I was around 16. It wasn't long before I wanted to try something different. An attempt at moving at the "astral plane" - spontaneous visualization to communicate with other forces. I'm not quite sure how to define it yet. All I know is that I did encounter someone. In high-grass plains, she suddenly appeared, like a barrier. It frightened me with a jolt and I ran downstairs with my mother.
A few years later I was discussing this sort of astral journeying witha group, and the organiser mentioned that sometimes we create natural barriers for ourselves - stone walls, locked gates - when we journey as a natural safeguard against what we're not prepared for. I don't know if the being I saw was my own mind or someone else, but I understand that I obviously wasn't ready for that yet.
It was some time before I tried that again.
For a while I also worked with Zen or No-Mind meditation. i like to think it not in terms of "Focus on not thinking" but "Don't focus on any thoughts you have." The images come and go, you don't even register them.
Up until I began with ADF, my meditation working with my chakras. I'd envision a solid colour - ranging from red to ultra-violet to white on the rainbow spectrum - and feel energy move it's way up my spine, colour corresponding to the chakra. By the time it reach my crown, I fall into what I refer to as a sort of euphoric trance state. I haven't been able to maintain it for a whole ritual, but I'm experimenting.
I really understood Jenni Hunt's article "Meditation for the Type A Personality." I don't really consider myself a chronic thinker or busy multi-tasker, but her "zoning out" explanations are spot on. I'm a public transit user, I'm often tired, I often space out.
I've had it that I was so focused on drawing once that I didn't notice a whole room of people calling my name. I did, but much later, only to respond as if I had been asked the second before.
Sometimes I play pool and I have what I calla "Zen moment" -an instant of perfect concentration where I know I will sink that ball. Kind of silly, but related.
Today, I began by starting up the Krishna Das playlist. I experimented with breathing, swaying to one song, singing to the next - focusing on whatever dominant action I was doing, and just lketting any thought-images come and go. Effective all in all, I'd say.
As for breathing, I found it frustrating to always have to count. For the most part I maintained a 4second inhale, 3 second hold, 4 second exhale, 5 second hold, more or less. I find it very easy to start taking shallower breaths at a regular pace and entering more of a trance like state. I was out for around 15 minutes.
